Compare this to the lift-off of the space shuttle Atlantis on the nearly 12 day STS-132 mission. The NASA press kit for STS-132 lists combined weight of the shuttle system at launch as 4,519,769 pounds, with a height of 184 feet.

Mercury Redstone 3 and Atlantis are perhaps the bookends for the NASA manned spaced program; the last flight of Atlantis (STS-135) may well be the last time U.S. astronauts fly aboard spacecraft designed and built by NASA.